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Hominidae expanded!?

Mike,
I haven't been following primate classification for a while, but I never thought the cladists would dump the gorilla and chimpanzees in Hominidae. I thought maybe they would recognize separate families for gorilla and for chimps, but this really takes me by surprise. I wonder when the Arizona Tree of Life adopted this?
Both Family Hominidae and the term hominids has obviously been expanded, and all references in the previous literature to hominids and pongids is going to be unnecessarily confusing. Come to think of it, they will be confusing in all future literature as well, because most workers will continue to use Hominidae sensu stricto, and put gorillas and chimps in Pongidae (as has always been done).
How depressing.
------Ken :-(
******************************************************* 
From: "T. Mike Keesey" <tmk@dinosauricon.com>
Reply-To: tmk@dinosauricon.com
To: Adam Britton <abritton@wmi.com.au>
CC: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Subject: Re: Dinosaur Books and Movies
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 01:39:20 -0500 (EST)

On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Adam Britton wrote:

> > No, since we're not descended from chimpanzees.
>
> No but they are close relatives. I was driving at the idea that despite
> anatomical similarities with chimpanzees, orangutans etc, we are still
> classed as humans. However, it wasn't a very good example for two reasons:
> 1. humans descended from a common ancestor with apes and 2. the resolution
> was inappropriate: you'll simply point out that we're all still classed as
> primates.

It's not a single common ancestor, either -- we share a more recent
ancestor with the African apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos) than with
orangutans, and gibbons are outside the great apes + humans clade.

--Hominoidea
  |--Hylobates (gibbons)
  `--+--Pongo (orangutan)
     `--Hominidae
        |--Gorilla (gorillas -- obviously)
        |--Homo (us)
        `--Pan (chimpanzees & bonobos)

(Or is _Hominidae_ Clade(_Pongo_ + _Homo_)? I can never remember....)

> Ok, so we classify "birds" and "dinosaurs" within the "Dinosauria". Still, I
> think that modern group of mainly volant, feathered critters should be
> within a subgroup "birds" to separate them from another subgroup of mainly
> terrestrial, non-feathered critters called "dinosaurs". Hence birds can be
> called "dinosaurs" in the same way that humans can be called "primates", no?
> Forgive the simplistic thinking, but personally it helps me (if nothing
> else) to create a token division between two groups with quite different
> ecologies. [that reads like I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not really!]

Simplistic or not, that is absolutely correct! Phylogenetic
classifications regard _Aves_ as a clade within _Dinosauria_, just as
_Homo_ is a clade within _Primates_ (well, not everyone agrees that genera
should be converted to clades, but _Homo_ is within _Primates_
nonetheless). It's still a clade, but it isn't separated from its
ancestors. (And the modern clade, _Neornithes_, is within _Aves_ -- and
hence, by extension, within _Dinosauria_).

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